Stay up to date:Get a free personalized pregnancy and baby newsletter from What to Expect.com

Get your free personalized pregnancy and baby newsletter

or

I'm trying to conceive

I don’t live in the U.S.

First Time Mom

By clicking "SIGN UP," you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. We will use your information to send you our newsletters, coupons and special offers, and we share your information with our partners

Summary: A diet rich in fruits, veggies, and whole grains when you're expecting is good for you, your baby, and the health of your pregnancy — and now a new study finds that a healthy diet also reduces the risk of premature birth.

By Sharon Mazel | Posted: March 5, 2014

You know that diet matters during pregnancy, so findings of a new study published in the journal BMJ should come as no surprise: Moms-to-be who eat a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains…and who drink water as their beverage of choice, have a significantly reduced risk of delivering their babies early.

Researchers in Sweden, Norway, and Iceland wanted to see if there was a link between an expectant woman's diet and preterm delivery. So they analyzed data from 66,000 women in the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study over six years — five percent of whom delivered early (before 37 weeks gestation), taking into account the mother's age, history of preterm delivery, and education (all factors that are known to up the odds for a preterm delivery). They identified three distinct diets among the moms-to-be: "prudent" (lots of fruits, vegetables, healthy oils, whole grains, low fat poultry, water instead of colas and juices), "Western" (salty and sweet snacks, white bread, processed meat products, and lots of desserts), and "traditional" (or at least traditional in the Norwegian countries — potatoes, fish, gravy, cooked vegetables, and milk).

They found that the "prudent" diet — the one loaded with fruits, veggies, and whole grains — significantly reduced the risk of preterm delivery by 12 percent, especially among first time moms. They also found a reduced risk of preterm delivery (nine percent reduced risk) among the women who ate the "traditional" diet. They found no link between a "Western" diet and an increased risk of premature delivery.

Bottom line: Eating well during pregnancy can reduce your risk for an early delivery...but it's more about what you do eat as opposed to what you don't eat. The researchers say that their findings suggest that increasing the amount of healthy foods in your pregnancy diet is more important that totally excluding the bad stuff — the processed food, the junk food, the snacks.